Speaker 1: There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of my Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative, I'm bridget tout
Speaker 1: and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So it turns out it's not just you. I feel
Speaker 1: like Instagram has been pretty not fun lately. Images on
Speaker 1: my grid looked terrible. I hardly ever see pictures from
Speaker 1: the people I actually want to get updates from my
Speaker 1: in real life friends, cool creators that I intentionally followed
Speaker 1: on Instagram so that I would see their posts, I
Speaker 1: almost never see them, And actually I hardly ever see
Speaker 1: photos on Instagram at all. What I do see are
Speaker 1: tons of reels short video clips from creators and influencers
Speaker 1: that I don't follow and have never interacted with. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's just my feed, but it's
Speaker 1: usually not even reels about things that actually interest me,
Speaker 1: Like I get a lot of reels about cleaning hacks
Speaker 1: and different eating tactics that people are using, and anyone
Speaker 1: who knows me knows that I am not interested in cleaning.
Speaker 1: I am a total slub, although maybe that's just the
Speaker 1: algorithm kind of shadily trying to tell me something. And
Speaker 1: it's also clear that a lot of these reels are
Speaker 1: just repurposed videos from TikTok, oftentimes one that I've already
Speaker 1: seen on TikTok making its way to Instagram weeks later.
Speaker 1: I also see tons of sponsored reels that are just
Speaker 1: video advertisements, and I see a lot of the same
Speaker 1: kinds of video advertisements in my Instagram stories too. So
Speaker 1: if you have noticed this, you are not alone, and
Speaker 1: the ever powerful Kardashians have noticed it too. This week,
Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner posted a meme reading, make
Speaker 1: Instagram Instagram again. Stop trying to be TikTok. I just
Speaker 1: want to see cute photos of my friends and celebrities
Speaker 1: like the Kardashians had historically had a pretty big influence
Speaker 1: in the way that social media platforms are run. In February,
Speaker 1: Kylie Jenner posted a tweet to her then twenty were
Speaker 1: point five million followers saying that Snapchat was basically over.
Speaker 1: She tweeted, so does anyone else not even open Snapchat anymore?
Speaker 1: Or is it just me? This is so sad? And
Speaker 1: just one day later, Snapchat shares had plummeted by six percent,
Speaker 1: and within a week, Snapchat had lost about one point
Speaker 1: three billion dollars, and back when Snapchat featured an offensive
Speaker 1: advertisement made by a third party that asked users whether
Speaker 1: they'd rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown. You'll remember
Speaker 1: that Chris Brown was dating Rihanna and physically attacked her.
Speaker 1: Snapchat apologized, but Rihanna was not having it. She responded, saying,
Speaker 1: you spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring
Speaker 1: shame to domestic violence victims and make a joke of it.
Speaker 1: This isn't about my personal feelings, because I don't have
Speaker 1: much of them, but all the women, children, and men
Speaker 1: who have been victims of domestic violence in the past,
Speaker 1: and especially the ones that haven't made it out yet.
Speaker 1: You let us down. Shame on. You throw the whole
Speaker 1: appology away, And people listened, and they really did throw
Speaker 1: the whole app away. This whole thing ended up costing
Speaker 1: Snapchat about eight hundred million dollars according to Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: So there is definitely a precedent for big celebrities having
Speaker 1: a very real influence over social media platforms, which is
Speaker 1: probably why the very next day, the head of Instagram
Speaker 1: at A. Mossy, rushed to respond to the Kardashian criticisms
Speaker 1: of the app, criticisms that I feel really echo how
Speaker 1: a lot of us feel about Instagram. Ryan Mack, tech
Speaker 1: reporter at The New York Times, pointed out that Mossy
Speaker 1: usually posts recaps or updates about what's happening with Instagram
Speaker 1: at the end of the week, but this time he
Speaker 1: responded the very next day, on a Tuesday. After the
Speaker 1: Kardashians posts, Max said that he would not be surprised
Speaker 1: at all of their criticisms were seen internally at Instagram
Speaker 1: as red alerts at the company needed to respond to immediately.
Speaker 1: So let's get into his response, which frankly wasn't great. First,
Speaker 1: he posted a video on Twitter, which I feel like
Speaker 1: really tells you something that he needed to use a
Speaker 1: completely different platform to explain the changes, but in any event,
Speaker 1: basically he said, we know you hate what's going on
Speaker 1: with Instagram, and it's obviously awful, but too bad because
Speaker 1: we're not going to change it. A big complaint is
Speaker 1: that photos, which was initially the purpose of Instagram in
Speaker 1: the first place, have been deprioritized by the platform's algorithm
Speaker 1: in favor of TikTok style video reels. So unless you're
Speaker 1: posting that kind of video content, your posts are likely
Speaker 1: not going to have a lot of reach. So if
Speaker 1: you've noticed that images that you've been posted on Instagram
Speaker 1: have not gotten a lot of engagement lately, that's what's
Speaker 1: going on. Mosery spoke to this, saying that the platform
Speaker 1: was only trying to give users what they want, which
Speaker 1: is video content. That said, I need to be honest,
Speaker 1: I do believe that more and more Instagram is going
Speaker 1: to become video over time. We see this even if
Speaker 1: we change nothing. We see this even if you just
Speaker 1: look at chronological feed. If you look at what people
Speaker 1: share on Instagram, that's shifting more and more to video
Speaker 1: over time. If you look at what people like and
Speaker 1: consume and view on Instagram, that's also shifting more and
Speaker 1: more to video over time, even when we stop changing anything.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna have to lean into that shift while
Speaker 1: continuing to support photos. The third thing I want to
Speaker 1: talk about is recommendations. Recommendations are posts in your feed
Speaker 1: from accounts that you do not follow. The idea is
Speaker 1: to help you discovered new and interesting things on Instagram,
Speaker 1: and you might not know even exist now. If you're
Speaker 1: seeing things in your feed that are recommendations, that you're
Speaker 1: not interested in. That means that we're doing a bad
Speaker 1: job ranking and we need to improve, And you can
Speaker 1: ex out for recommendation. You can even snooze all recommendations
Speaker 1: for up to a month or go to your following feed.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna continue to try and get better at
Speaker 1: recommendations because we think it's one of the most effective
Speaker 1: and important ways to help creators reach more people. And
Speaker 1: I hate, hate, hate that reasoning, because first, they basically
Speaker 1: use their algorithm to surface video content over photos, and
Speaker 1: they've been explicitly telling creators that they have to make
Speaker 1: video content if they want to perform well on Stagram.
Speaker 1: So then turning around and claiming, oh, video it's just
Speaker 1: the kind of content that users like to engage with
Speaker 1: the most, So we're just giving you what you want,
Speaker 1: like they didn't actually put their thumb on the scales.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really work. And Instagram really has gone out of
Speaker 1: their way to tell creators that they must be making
Speaker 1: reels to perform well, even giving creators the ability to
Speaker 1: monetize reels on the platform. So obviously prioritizing video content
Speaker 1: isn't just some happenstance way that the platform is trying
Speaker 1: to give users what they want. Also, I have a
Speaker 1: really hard time just taking Facebook at their word about
Speaker 1: how they say their users are engaging with video content.
Speaker 1: Let's take a little ship down memory lane. Facebook has
Speaker 1: a clear documented history of inflating metrics to benefit their
Speaker 1: own bottom line, and I guess another word for that
Speaker 1: might be lying or might be fraud. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm the legal expert, but you know, not telling the
Speaker 1: truth about what's going on. We'll say Facebook had to
Speaker 1: pay out forty million dollars to settle a lawsuit involving
Speaker 1: inflated video metrics. Their metrics were inflated by one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty to so basically, Facebook told media companies that
Speaker 1: users are watching lots and lots and lots of video
Speaker 1: content as opposed to reading text content, which was not
Speaker 1: true at all, and based on that, companies then pivoted
Speaker 1: to video and did things like laying off writing staff
Speaker 1: to prioritize video producers. I was working in media at
Speaker 1: the time, and I actually saw firsthand the real world
Speaker 1: impact and harm this cause to actual people. People lost
Speaker 1: their jobs and previously independent media outlets like College Humor
Speaker 1: and n Z on the Air either shrunk or in
Speaker 1: some cases folded all together. And I saw so many
Speaker 1: good people be pushed out of media because of this
Speaker 1: and just leave the field because working in a field
Speaker 1: where a company like Facebook can have so much control
Speaker 1: over your livelihood by lying just didn't feel stable. And
Speaker 1: Facebook's punishment for doing all this, well, I told you
Speaker 1: that Facebook had to pay forty million dollars to settle
Speaker 1: this case, but that's just point eight percent of the
Speaker 1: company's annual revenue, so pretty much nothing. And this isn't
Speaker 1: even the first time that Facebook has misled people about
Speaker 1: how users are engaging with their content. A lawsuit from
Speaker 1: one alleges the company lied to advertisers about how many
Speaker 1: people their ads could reach for years and they did
Speaker 1: this knowingly, and when a Facebook product manager suggested changes
Speaker 1: to make the metrics more accurate, Facebook managers rejected the
Speaker 1: idea because the revenue impact would be significant. Oh or
Speaker 1: how about when Facebook decided to get into podcasts back
Speaker 1: in and it only lasted a year during which it
Speaker 1: seems like everybody was getting their podcast from Facebook only
Speaker 1: the company said that a quote error was causing those
Speaker 1: metrics to be artificially inflated. Before ditching podcasts altogether. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah, definitely trust what Facebook says about how users
Speaker 1: engaged with its content. At your own peril. Let's get
Speaker 1: a quick break ut our back. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what it really comes down to. Instagram wants to do
Speaker 1: two things. One compete with TikTok. If you listen to
Speaker 1: the episode that we did with Abby Richards about how
Speaker 1: they worked with pr companies to make TikTok look bad,
Speaker 1: then you already know all about this and to generate
Speaker 1: ad revenue. They don't care if this is what their
Speaker 1: user base wants or what creators want. Their leadership is
Speaker 1: basically just saying too bad. And you know, I love TikTok,
Speaker 1: but I don't make video content myself because it's just
Speaker 1: not me. I'm a podcaster, not a performer. I want
Speaker 1: to break something down and like a wordy thirty minute episode,
Speaker 1: which just does not always translate to a slick, thirty
Speaker 1: second video performance. I also just think that short form
Speaker 1: video takes a lot more of a specific kind of
Speaker 1: energy and skills, and it's actually why influencers like the
Speaker 1: Kardashians probably don't like it very much, because it's one
Speaker 1: thing to be gorgeous and look perfect and polished and
Speaker 1: as still photograph. It's quite another to make a video
Speaker 1: where you have to be engaging, funny or smart and
Speaker 1: no shade to them, because it is definitely not my
Speaker 1: skill set either. I remember when Instagram first started prioritizing
Speaker 1: video content, and I knew it was pretty much gonna
Speaker 1: be over for me on that platform. Instagram specifically told
Speaker 1: creators that if they wanted their post to perform well
Speaker 1: on the platform, they needed to post five to seven
Speaker 1: reels per week. That's like a real every day. And
Speaker 1: I just didn't like the idea of trying to push
Speaker 1: myself to make a real every day, whether I felt
Speaker 1: like it or not, or whether I had something to
Speaker 1: say or not, just to appease whatever Mark Zuckerbird and
Speaker 1: Adam Osarri had arbitrarily decided and that they could change
Speaker 1: at any moment. I can imagine it's probably not great
Speaker 1: for the mental health of creators who are being pushed
Speaker 1: to pump out more and more content if they want
Speaker 1: to make an impact and be prioritized on the platform.
Speaker 1: And it does just feel like we're all behold into
Speaker 1: whatever new thing Facebook and Meta decided to prioritize back
Speaker 1: in the day, Instagram was just this chronological feed that
Speaker 1: showed things like kind of an appetizing lunch or dinner
Speaker 1: meals and cat photos. Then in they ditched the chronological
Speaker 1: feed in favor of the algorithmic one that we have now.
Speaker 1: Then to compete with Snapchat, they started stories, and when
Speaker 1: they rolled that out, that was where all the engagement
Speaker 1: was at. Then there was their live streaming, and then
Speaker 1: ten they roll without i g t V to compete
Speaker 1: with YouTube, which they shut down earlier this year, and
Speaker 1: now we have reels, which honestly just feels like a
Speaker 1: less good clone of TikTok, And I guess I just
Speaker 1: don't understand what role Instagram is trying to play in
Speaker 1: my digital life. It's trying to compete with so many
Speaker 1: things Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and doing none of them particularly well,
Speaker 1: even when the thing that put it on the map
Speaker 1: was so simple, just images. Like I said, it's just
Speaker 1: not fun. And it's also a bummer because I used
Speaker 1: to love Instagram. It used to be pretty fun, writer
Speaker 1: Jess Scholl. And they did a great job of summing
Speaker 1: up how I feel about it, saying on Twitter, the
Speaker 1: only people who want these changes are advertisers. Congrats on
Speaker 1: turning a simple app for sharing photos into a dead
Speaker 1: virtual mall. And since so many of the reals you
Speaker 1: see now are from people that you don't follow, have
Speaker 1: never engaged with, and who make content about stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't interest you, I really can't imagine this is an
Speaker 1: ideal situation for creators either non binary. Cause Play creator
Speaker 1: lizard Lee, who has about sixty followers on Instagram, tweeted
Speaker 1: about the platforms recommendations being so bad that creators like
Speaker 1: them get an influx of abuse and angry comments from
Speaker 1: people who don't follow them, who are furious that their
Speaker 1: content that they don't want to see or even care about,
Speaker 1: has been surface to them now. Lizard Lee says that
Speaker 1: they don't blame those users who leave those angry comments.
Speaker 1: They blame Instagram for continuously serving up content and what
Speaker 1: seems like haphazard ways the people who do not want it.
Speaker 1: But if you're missing the chronological feed of people that
Speaker 1: you actually follow, like me, I do have one good
Speaker 1: tip for you. You can kind of go back to
Speaker 1: a chronological feed of people that you intentionally follow if
Speaker 1: you use instagram Ms following tab, which will show you
Speaker 1: pose from people that you follow in chronological order. Just
Speaker 1: go to your Instagram home screen and tap the cursive
Speaker 1: Instagram logo in the top left corner of your homepage.
Speaker 1: Don't feel bad if you didn't know about this feature.
Speaker 1: I didn't know about it either, And I guess that's
Speaker 1: kind of my point. If we're having to do so
Speaker 1: much gamifying to make Instagram a platform that works for
Speaker 1: us and actually provides the user experience that we're all
Speaker 1: looking for, isn't something wrong? Should we need to do
Speaker 1: so much just to get back to that simple Instagram
Speaker 1: functionality that users say they want. And for the head
Speaker 1: of Instagram, Adam o Serri, to make this desperate video
Speaker 1: on Twitter about how no, no, no, no, we know
Speaker 1: Instagram is terrible, but it's for your own good. Just
Speaker 1: kind of feels like the last gasp of a dying
Speaker 1: company that doesn't know what it wants to be. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I really want to hear what you think. What is
Speaker 1: your experience on Instagram, ben Like, what are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on video content like reels? Do you love it? Do
Speaker 1: you hate it? I really want to know. Hit me
Speaker 1: up on social media, yep, even on Instagram. My handle
Speaker 1: is Bridget Marie in d C or shoot me and
Speaker 1: em out at Hello at tangodi dot com. If you're
Speaker 1: looking for ways to support the show, check out our
Speaker 1: mark store at tangodi dot com slash store. You can
Speaker 1: also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
Speaker 1: me bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: Unboss Creative edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our
Speaker 1: executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Speaker 1: Michael Amata was our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Toad.
Speaker 1: If you want to help us grow, rate and review
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